For my infographic, I set up an interview with Jonathan Goldstein, who attended my alma mater, American University. I did not know Jonathan during my time at American University, but we did have some mutual connections, so it made this a relatively laid back process for me to reach out to him.
It did not take long for him to respond, thankfully, and I was able to set up an interview with him very quickly. Jonathan works in suite services and his communication is almost exclusively with suite members and receiving their feedback and turning it into better services.
This form of communication is not necessarily the type that we focus on in our class, but I do think it holds a high level of importance as suite members are fans who are putting lots of money into the franchise, and whose opinions of the team and their operations matters.
Jonathan spoke to me about lots of his past experiences leading up to his current position, and the one that stuck out to him the most as his favorite and most influential was his time as a Division Leader for PlaybyPlay sports camps. Jonathan enjoyed the role he played there and being able to help kids through sports. He told me that without this experience, he is not sure that he would have pursued a career in sports because of how much it helped him understand the power and influence of sports in our society.
I also really enjoyed hearing that Jonathan started with Monumental in 2021 and has been promoted since then, also adding that most of the promotions given that he has seen have come from people within the company. I would really love to work for Monumental Sports specifically, and hearing that their promotions are sought for within the company is reassuring for me.
In conclusion, this was another success story of getting out of my comfort zone a little bit and just reaching out to someone to have a discussion. I connected with someone I should have connected with last year, and I might have set myself up with a useful connection for the future.